‘Growing Up Buckley’

Christopher Buckley ’75, the speaker at next month’s Class Day, has a lengthy excerpt from his upcoming book, “Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir,” included in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine.

Buckley writes that his book is “an account of becoming an orphan,” after the death of both of his parents in an 11 month span. Buckley spends a considerable amount of space describing his relationship with his father, famed conservative and former News chairman William F. Buckley ’50, who died Feb. 27, 2008 at 82. (Read the News’ obituary here, and coverage of his memorial service here.)

“Recently, I was driving behind a belchy city bus and suddenly found myself thinking, not for the first time, about whether Pup is in heaven,” Buckley, the co-founder of the Yale Daily News Magazine, writes in the excerpt. “He spent so much of his life on his knees in church, so much of his life doing the right thing by so many people, a thousand acts of generosity. I hesitate to put it this way, but I’m dying of curiosity: how did it turn out, Pup? Were you right, after all? Is there a heaven? Is Mum there with you? Grumbling, almost certainly, about the ‘inedible food,’ and saying, ‘Bill, you’ve got to speak to that absurd St. Peter creature about getting Christopher in — I mean, it’s all too ridiculous for words.’ ”

(Photo: The Collection of Christopher Buckley, via The New York Times)